Is House Refugee Resettlement Bill Just for Show? Looks Like That’s What Paul Ryan Wants

Speaker Ryan, many of us feared that we couldn’t trust you on amnesty. You promised an open process, so why no amendments to refugee resettlement bill?

As you know, today the House will take up House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mike McCaul’s (R-TX) American Security Against Foreign Enemies (SAFE) Act, a bill that ostensibly imposes a rigorous screening process on “refugees” seeking to enter the United States. Obama has threatened to veto the bill, which might actually be part of the Kabuki theater of this legislation. Why do I say this? Isn’t this McCaul bill exactly what we want, with its requirements that (1) “The FBI director must certify the background investigation of each refugee” and (2) “the secretary of homeland security, FBI director and the director of national intelligence must unanimously concur that each refugee is not a security threat to the United states and make a certification to Congress.” Supposedly “[t]his bill constitutes an effective pause until we are certain that no refugee from Iraq and Syria who is a threat will be allowed in the country.”

Sounds good, except that there’s an obvious problem. The officials who have to make these certifications all work for Barack Obama! Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX), whose Resettlement Accountability National Security Act (H.R. 3314) we have been championing for months, had an amendment to close this loophole. From Breitbart:

Rep. Brian Babin was one of several members of Congress that moved to offer amendments – which were all blocked by House Rules Chairman Pete Sessions (R-TX) – that would have placed a six-month moratorium on allowing refugees into the United States.

Babin’s amendment would have also required a Government Accountability Office “study within 90 days of the economic impact of refugees on state and local governments.”

“This would be an amendment to the bill that we are talking about on the floor,” Babin told to the House Rules Committee late Wednesday evening. “There are still too many unknowns with [McCaul’s] bill in its current form.”

And what did the new Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, do? He blocked this important and very useful amendment!

So this bill is just for show. The only hope at really stopping this “refugee” invasion is for Congress to use the most potent weapon it has, the one that the gutless GOP leadership has always refused to use against Obama; specifically, the power of the purse. We’ve been telling you on The Teri O’Brien Show that our opportunity comes with December 11 spending bill. Stay tuned for what we need to do, Patriots.

[…] Last December, the House did indeed pass Rep. Mike McCaul’s (R-TX) American Security Against Foreign Enemies (SAFE) Act, which ostensibly imposes a rigorous screening process on “refugees” seeking to enter the United States. I called the bill part of the Kabuki theater around this issue, writing […]